Mission Earth Books in Order

Mission Earth is L. Ron Hubbard’s ten-volume science fiction satire about an alien plan to save Earth just long enough to invade it later. The setup is big and deliberately absurd: Earth, known to the Voltarians as Blito-P3, sits on the Voltar Confederacy’s future invasion schedule. The problem is that humans may wreck the planet before Voltar gets around to conquering it.

So the Voltarians send Jettero Heller, a Royal combat engineer, to fix the situation. Heller is brave, talented, and too honest for the people using him. His job is to introduce technology that can slow pollution and preserve the planet for the empire’s later use.

That is where Soltan Gris comes in.

Gris, an officer in the Voltarian Apparatus, narrates the story as a confession from prison. He has been ordered to watch Heller and quietly sabotage the mission. Gris is petty, vain, corrupt, and often ridiculous, which gives the series much of its comic energy. He is also dangerous, because his failures tend to leave bodies, lawsuits, wrecked plans, and bigger conspiracies behind.

Across the ten books, the action moves between Voltar, a secret base in Turkey, New York, Atlantic City, and other corners of a cartoonishly corrupt Earth. Hubbard uses the alien viewpoint to poke at oil companies, bureaucracy, public relations, organized crime, drugs, psychiatry, finance, celebrity, and government power. The tone is broad rather than subtle. If a target appears, the series usually hits it with a mallet.

The ongoing thread is the fight over Heller’s mission. Heller wants to do the job and return to Countess Krak, while Gris keeps trying to stop him, impress his superiors, enrich himself, and survive the mess he has made. Around them swirl Lombar Hisst’s power grab, Delbert Rockecenter’s corporate interests, the Apparatus drug trade, and a growing stack of lies that cannot hold forever.

It is not a quiet series.

Readers should start with The Invaders Plan. The books are meant to be read in order, and later volumes depend heavily on running jokes, schemes, character grudges, and cliffhangers from earlier entries. If you like sprawling space opera with slapstick villainy and pointed social satire, Mission Earth is the place to start in Hubbard’s late-career fiction.